


it's not love, it's a dvd box set

by Tyleet



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-09
Updated: 2013-02-09
Packaged: 2017-11-28 18:40:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/677597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyleet/pseuds/Tyleet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Executive decision: we're busting out the tequila," Darcy decides. </p><p>Love makes you do the wacky.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's not love, it's a dvd box set

**Author's Note:**

> My eternal gratitude to dignifiedrice for tolerating my wishy-washiness, reading everything I throw at her, and giving me consistently good advice. <3 Written for femslash february. 
> 
> There are tons and tons of Buffy-isms in here, which I make no claim to--consider it all loving quotation. Also, if you haven't seen all of Buffy and/or Angel, you might be spoiled by conversations that happen in this fic. <3

It wasn’t really a glamorous internship even before you factored Jane in. Come to New Mexico during your winter break to do glorified data-entry! Perks include free Poptarts, six college credits, and the laughter of your peers and professors when they find out exactly what your boss is researching!  
  
Jane doesn’t exactly have the best reputation in the academic community, these days. Much less in New Mexico, where the science professors have been teaching their students to sneer at Area 51 from day one.  
  
But still, she gets an application. An, as in one. It was submitted by a twenty-three year old political science masters student at UNM, who got her bachelor’s degree in comparative literature. A political science student who literally references Area 51 in her letter of application.

“When did this become my life?” Jane wonders aloud, before sighing and typing up Darcy Lewis’s acceptance email.

*

Darcy is, without a doubt, the worst intern Jane’s ever had, and she’s counting the Berkley grad from two years ago who tried to use his stipend to buy a plane ticket to Hawaii after working for Jane three days.

It’s not that Darcy isn’t smart, because she is, or that she won’t take direction, because she does, but—she doesn’t _know_ anything. Not any of the programs, or any of the vocabulary, or any of the basic laws of physics, and Jane is getting very, very annoyed with having to stop and explain everything. Having an intern is supposed to be a help, in theory—or at the very least not a hindrance.

Add to that Darcy’s laconic attitude, her frightening attachment to her phone, her tendency to not take anything—including Jane’s research—seriously, her addiction to top-forties music, and the sarcasm that shines from her heavy-lidded eyes, curls in the corner of her frankly beautiful mouth, and, well.  
  
It’s enough to send Jane escaping up to the roof, working in her notebook instead of her computer for a change, reminding herself that she has a rule about not sleeping with people that annoy her, anyway.

*  
  
“Dude,” Darcy says, popping out of a corner of the lab with an awed expression on her face and a boxed set of DVDs in one hand. A boxed set Jane had thought she’d hidden well enough that nobody could possibly find it (who looked behind the extra filing folders, anyway?) “All seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer? You’ve been holding out on me, Foster.”  
  
Jane focuses on her computer, willing herself not to blush. So much for secret guilty pleasures. “Well, you know, sometimes...it takes a program a while to render, so—“  
  
“—So you spend the time with Buffy and Spike instead of twiddling your thumbs,” Darcy finishes with a small grin. “Well. I gotta confess I’m relieved. I was starting to think you weren’t human.”  
  
“Sorry to disappoint,” Jane says, annoyed, and she’s just about to suggest that Darcy put the DVDs away and get back to work—like she should have been doing in the first place—when Darcy smiles at her, seemingly free of guile, and asks:  
  
“So. Marathon later? I am _so_ in the mood to see a blonde superhero stab a sword through a vampire tonight.”

“…Okay,” Jane says, because her teenage years hardwired the answer to this question right into her soul (“Do you want to watch Buffy?” “ _Yes_ ”), and she isn’t really capable of resisting.

Darcy shoots her a finger-gun and says: “Cool.”

*  
  
Darcy likes Spike better than Angel, because _of course_ she does.

They watch Becoming Parts 1 and 2, arguing viciously the whole way through, and then work their way through Innocence, Lover’s Walk, Crush, and Fool For Love for comparison’s sake.  
  
Nobody wins, but they do drink the six pack that Darcy (very inappropriately, Jane thinks with a grumble) brought as a peace offering. When they move on to the early episodes of season two, Jane runs down to her trailer and comes back with a half-gallon of mocha-almond fudge and two spoons, and Darcy _beams_ at her, happy and flushed and—still completely wrong about Angel. I’m in trouble, Jane thinks distantly. Abort, abort.

Darcy licks ice-cream off her spoon with a flourish, accidentally flicking an almond sliver onto the carpet, and Jane sighs in annoyance. Too late.

*  
  
So she’s maybe not the _worst_ intern Jane’s ever had.  
  
She’s good at organization, good at anticipating the things Jane will want as soon as she’s figured out the basics of the job, really stupendously good at making Folgers instant packets taste like actual coffee. She’s good at reminding Jane she needs to do basic human things like sleep and eat food with more nutritional content than Cheetos and Poptarts.  
  
She’s good to joke with, and good to drink with, and really good at distracting Jane when she really needs to be distracted.  
  
She’s maybe a little indispensible, Jane catches herself thinking guiltily.  
  
*

There are lots of reasons you shouldn’t sleep with your interns. Power dynamics, for one. The weirdness of sleeping with someone almost a decade younger than you, for another. There’s the part where Darcy’s internship only lasts for another month, anyway, and Jane’s never really been good with casual hookups. It’s also probably against a sexual harassment policy, somewhere.

And then there’s the part where Jane hasn’t had sex with a woman since her PhD program, and while she’s a comfortable two on the Kinsey scale in private, circumstance and her last three relationships have made it easier to not really be out at work, and no matter how shut-away from the rest of the world working with Darcy in the tiniest town in the world can feel like, Darcy is still part of her work.  
  
Also, she has no idea which way Darcy swings, which she tells herself firmly is a good thing.  
  
*  
  
“Chuck fuck and marry, the cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and/or Angel, go!” Darcy says randomly while driving Jane out to the desert. (Two days into her internship and Darcy had demanded that Jane hand over the van keys permanently, because she was, quote: “a freaking psycho behind the wheel,” end quote. Jane would be offended, except, well, it’s sort of true. She can’t help it if driving helps her think, and that when she thinks she gets—distracted.)   
  
“Chuck Xander,” Jane says immediately, because she never really forgave him for leaving Anya at the altar, and Darcy nods in approval. “Um. Fuck Angel,” she says almost as quickly, because seriously: a huge, well-muscled, gorgeous immortal with a tragic past? Why wouldn’t you?

“Boo,” Darcy says with a groan. “He’d wake up and kill you.”  
  
“He can sleep with people who aren’t Buffy,” Jane protests.  
  
“So you’d be happy being someone’s second-best?” Darcy says skeptically. “Boo squared.”  
  
“We’re just talking sex,” Jane says with a shrug. “I’m picking someone way better adjusted for marriage.”  
  
“And who would that be?” Darcy asks. “’Cause this show is not full of well-adjusted people.”  
  
“…Cordelia,” Jane says, because come on—there isn’t really another answer.  
  
Darcy snorts, but the comment Jane expects never comes. “Oh come on, she is not well-adjusted.”

“Cordelia circa season two of Angel,” Jane says decidedly. “With less of the selfishness, all of the heroism, and, um, the quippiness and the practicality and the—being good with details. I would clearly need to marry somebody way more down to earth than me.”  
  
“I guess I can see it,” Darcy says after a pause. “Also, she’s smoking hot. Okay, sure, I give you Cordelia.”  
  
“Thanks,” Jane says drily. “Your turn.”  
  
“Chuck Wesley,” Darcy says. “Obviously. Fuck Spike—also, obviously. Marry Fred.”  
  
“Why Fred?” Jane asks carefully.

Darcy makes a face, like this too should be obvious. “Because she’s _Fred_ ,” she says. “Brainy, funny, a little dreamy, possessed of awesome hair and the cutest smile on both shows. Like, Spike and Faith are clearly the hottest of the hot,” she says with a faint smirk, “but you wouldn’t really want to live with them, you know? Fred, you could eat Chinese food with and watch tv with and listen to Beyonce with, and just, you know, _live_ with. Even if you did have to go hunt her down and rip some equations out of her hand before she remembered you existed. Plus, sexy mad scientist. I kind of have a thing.”  
  
“Yeah,” Jane says, biting her lip. “Um. It sucks that both of our picks are dead, huh?”  
  
“Also fictional,” Darcy says with an eye roll, but she does sound a little disappointed. “But yeah. I guess that does kind of suck.”

So much for blissful ignorance.

*  
  
Three days later, Erik flies in, and Jane drags the both of them out to a lightning storm, and together she and Darcy crash the van right into the supernatural, and everything changes.

Thor is everything she’s ever wanted, every dream she’s ever dreamed. Every research proposal she’s ever made that got unsympathetically rejected, ever paper that got laughed right out of the submission pool for the journal. Thor is years and years of her _work_ , suddenly realer than real, tall and cut and broad-shouldered with sharp blue eyes and a sweet, easy smile. He’s _real_ , and he’s ridiculous, and he sits up with her on the roof with golden light playing over his perfect features, like a daydream got confused and slipped into reality. He’s an actual alien, a story given flesh, _proof that she wasn’t crazy_ , all these years—the giddy rush when he tugs her up to the clouds feels as much like vindication and triumph as adrenaline and joy.

Other things change too:  
  
-The government suddenly cares about Jane’s research, and not in the nice way.  
  
-An evil robot descends from the sky and systematically burns Puente Antiguo to the ground.  
  
-The government returns just as suddenly and insists nicely but firmly that Jane start working for them.

-She hardly thinks about Darcy at all, even though she’s right by her side.

She kisses Thor farewell, and he tells her he’ll return for her.  
  
“You better,” she whispers, and he gives her a look that is all heat and promise.  
  
And then, of course, he doesn’t come back.

*

After Thor leaves, the world seems flat and colorless. She guesses that meeting real life Asgardian deities can mess with your base normal, make it seem brighter and richer and larger than life really is.  
  
“I’m not pining for somebody I knew for _two days_ ,” Jane snaps at Darcy, because she isn’t. She—okay, she really would have liked to see where that kiss led, but losing Thor was way more important than losing a beautiful person she would have liked to know better. That happened all the time.  
  
No, she’s pining for Thor the _real life alien,_ for the magical, thrilling proof of everything she’d spent her childhood and most of her career dreaming of, for the larger-than-life science fiction world that she got to live in for a brief shining minute and now is gone and apparently not coming back. That’s a _legitimate thing to be upset about._  
  
“Of course you’re not,” Darcy says soothingly, and hands Jane a bowl of mocha-almond-fudge dripping with extra fudge. “Did you want some tequila, too? ‘Cause I’ve got tequila.”

What will I do without you, Jane thinks thoughtlessly, and then can’t help it when her eyes fill with tears.

“Executive decision: we’re busting out the tequila,” Darcy says.  
  
There are two weeks left of Darcy’s internship.

*

Six months later, and Jane still gets daily texts and instant-messages that sound basically like this:  
  
 _have you eaten anything today? EAT_

_eat something that did not come from a box_

_*something green  
  
green tea ice cream does not count –yr mom_

_your norse mythology fact of the day: there was this one rhymester god, like, the original Elvis, and people dug his songs so much that somebody killed him and brewed him into mead. Anybody who drinks the mead/gets splashed with it becomes a poet. fact or fiction, do we think?_

_too bad loki’s evil in real life. he’s totally my favorite._

_cavemen vs astronauts, who would win?_

They end up talking on the phone pretty often, too. More often than Jane talks to pretty much anybody, except her mom and Erik. Which she guesses makes sense: once you’ve found out that the weird shit exists, it’s hard to want to spend too much time around normal people. Darcy feels the same.

“Ugh, I can’t handle the Muggle world,” Darcy confesses one night. “Like, you know how it goes when somebody you know dies, or gets married or something, and you can’t really handle how much the world doesn’t care? I feel like that, all the time. It makes focusing on my thesis, um. Hugely problematic. Some days I feel like only you and Erik are real, you know? And the government spooks, I guess. The people who _know_.”  
  
“I get it,” Jane tells her, because she does. “It’s like—the world grew ten sizes so that it had room for aliens, and gods, and magical hammers, and then when Thor left, the whole world just—contracted.”

“Yep,” Darcy agrees. “A world with three people in it.” There’s a slight pause, and then she adds: “I guess if I had to pick two people to share an aliens-are-real world with, you and Erik aren’t so bad. At least you both look for aliens professionally.”  
  
“Wow,” Jane says. “You really didn’t understand what we were doing at all, did you?”  
  
“Not that you’d be my first pick,” Darcy continues breezily. “Because obviously that would have to be Tony Stark and Zoe Saldana. Iron Man to fight the freaky iron robots, Zoe Saldana to fight everybody else. You know, useful people to have around in case of an alien invasion.”  
  
Jane thinks about Darcy in the face of disaster: yelling at people to move, trying to get people organized, her head firmly on. She thinks about Darcy’s total lack of qualifications, about her uselessness as a lab assistant, about the small daily texts she’s gotten ever since.

“Zoe Saldana’s an actress,” is all she says. “I’m betting that in real life she could kick about as much alien ass as I could.”  
  
“Psh,” Darcy says flippantly. “The star of Columbiana, Avatar, and Star Trek? I’d bet money on her surviving whatever apocalypse you threw at her.”

“ _Actress_ ,” Jane repeats.  
  
“Fine,” Darcy says. “Tony Stark fights the aliens, I provide much-needed sarcasm, and Zoe Saldana is smoking hot. Somebody has to provide the pretty in a world of three people.”  
  
“I think you’re doing just fine on that account,” Jane says without thinking, and there’s an awkward pause before they both burst out laughing.

*  
  
Jane gets a job offer at a research facility in Tromsø, and then the world falls apart. Jane stares at the destruction going down on her tv, and blindly gropes for her phone, punching in a number more on instinct than anything else.

Darcy picks up on the second ring. Thank god.

“Are you okay?” Darcy asks, voice high with fear.

“I’m fine,” Jane reassures her mindlessly. “Oh my god, are you seeing this?”  
  
It’s a stupid question. Of course she’s seeing this. The whole world is watching this.

Aliens pour out of a hole in the sky over Manhattan and wreak destruction.

They spot Iron Man—America’s most recognizable icon—in the shaky footage that’s making it to the screen, swallowed up in the mouth of a space-whale, and Jane thinks wildly about Darcy’s who-would-you-want-to-be-on-your-team-in-an-alien-invasion game.

There are others—people—who seem to be fighting the aliens, but they look pitifully small next to the gigantic beetleborg aliens and the even more gigantic flying killer whales.

Then there’s a flash of red, a man shooting up into the sky, something held aloft in one hand. He’s obscured by a dark cloud, and the lightning comes.

“ _Oh my god_ ,” Darcy says, and Jane can’t breathe properly, because of course it’s Thor. The camera image isn’t near clear enough to tell, but they’ve picked out his shape from the midst of a supernatural storm before, and seen it in person since: this is it, this is him.

“Oh my _god_ ,” Darcy repeats, “Are you okay? Fuck, don’t answer that, what a stupid question. Oh my god.”  
  
They watch the news for hours, far after the portal closes, after Jane thinks to call Erik (and what kind of friend is she, that it took her that long to remember to call him?) but Darcy makes her find another phone because she won’t let Jane hang up, and they both worry when he doesn’t answer.  
  
And then Jane has to hang up after all, because the government’s calling.  

*  
  
They want her back in the US—in Manhattan, in fact—and, as usual, they make her an offer it’s impossible to refuse.  
  
*  
  
Thor’s gone by the time she gets to Manhattan. She tells herself she isn’t disappointed.

Erik stays long enough to give Jane a hug, an explanation, and a thorough warning about the dangers of working for SHIELD before heading back to Norway—he makes it very clear that he wants nothing more to do with SHIELD, at least for the time being.  
  
*  
  
Very slowly, the world goes back to normal.

In the meantime, SHIELD wants Jane to work with the skeleton of the machine Erik used to open up a portal over Manhattan. They give her a badge with security clearance that lets her access pretty much anywhere in the strange mazelike building that begins right off Times Square and extends far beneath it, like an American version of the War Rooms. Well. Pretty much anywhere she wants to go, anyway.  
  
More importantly, they also give Jane a set of labs, five assistants, and access to actual alien technology. And this is straight Star Trek stuff, not mystical hammers and shining spears—this is salvaged Chitauri space-guns and motorcycles powered by telepathy, this is a team of engineers who want to work with Jane on developing their own arc reactor to power the tesseract machine, since Tony Stark will apparently try to save the world but doesn’t like sharing his stuff, this is—basically, heaven.

“That is so cool,” Darcy says over the phone, properly admiring.

“I _know_ ,” Jane says, still beaming.

“So what else have you done?” Darcy asks.

“What do you mean?” Jane replies, confused.

“I mean,” Darcy hesitates. “That all sounds very top secret and awesome. But, like, you’re in _New York_. Have you boned a celebrity yet? Stalked Captain America? Photobombed the paparazzi?”  
  
“I’ve been kind of busy,” Jane hedges.  
  
“…Oh my god, you haven’t even walked around Times Square,” Darcy says with dawning horror. “You let them show you your lab and your tiny government-funded apartment, and the only other place you’ve been is Starbucks.”  
  
“That’s not true,” Jane says, because she’s also been to CVS. “SHIELD’s offices are on Times Square. Um. That actually is top-secret, by the way.”

“You’re a tragedy!” Darcy yells. “Ugh, you’re living in West-Coast _candyland_ , and you haven’t even gotten a frozen hot chocolate from Serendipity 3!”  
  
“What’s Serendipity 3?” Jane asks.

“You’re impossible,” Darcy tells her. “But luckily for you and your malnourished soul, I graduated last week.”

…Last week, when they finally gave Jane access to Loki’s spear, and she fell asleep at the lab twice, and let her phone stay dead at the bottom of her purse for five days. Last week, when Darcy was apparently _graduating_.  

“Oh _no_ ,” Jane gasps, guilt hitting her like a punch to the gut. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, Darcy, I’m a bad friend, I’ve just been so wrapped up in everything here—but that’s no excuse. Congratulations. Oh god.”  
  
“Hey, it’s okay,” Darcy says gently. “I knew you were an absent-minded professor lady way back when you first hired me. It was just my master’s degree—not a huge deal. I would have reminded you if it was anything big.”

“It _is_ a big deal,” Jane insists, more than a little horrified.  
  
“ _Yeah_ it is,” Darcy says, and Jane can hear her grin over the phone. “I was lying to make you feel better. Dude, I have two degrees now! It’s awesome! I am totally a bachelor of arts and a master of polisci! That’s some cool shit, right there.”

“It is, it absolutely is,” Jane says, wincing. “And you totally deserve to have friends who remember when you matriculate.”

“Eh,” Darcy says lightly, “You’ll do in a pinch. Anyway, you totally deflected me from my point—I graduated, as in, I no longer go to UNM. And as I haven’t yet been snatched up by anybody for employment, and as I need some serious post-thesis decompression—how about I come visit you, and drag you around the parts of Manhattan you have so far only seen on tv? You could take a couple days off work, right?”  
  
“…Yeah,” Jane says reluctantly, guilt shaping her words. “I. I guess I could do that.”  
  
“Oh my god, I’m kidding,” Darcy laughs. “I wouldn’t drag you away from your job unless you really, really needed to sleep. I was thinking I might want to schedule a couple job interviews with people in the city, so crashing on your couch and sightseeing would be a really awesome perk.”  
  
“Yeah,” Jane says immediately, relieved. “Yeah, of course. That sounds—that sounds great.”  
  
As she hangs up, she’s taken by surprise by how much it really, really does.

*

It isn’t until she’s at the airport, waiting for Darcy’s flight to get in, that she realizes she hasn’t actually seen Darcy in person for over a year. Her heart starts beating a little quickly when people start streaming into baggage claim, and then there she is: heartbreaking in jeans and a leather jacket, a bright smile curling into her lips when she spots Jane.

Jane doesn’t run into her arms, or anything so cliché, but she is really glad that Darcy is the hugging type.

“So I hear you graduated,” Jane says into Darcy’s hair, arms still wrapped around her. “That’s pretty cool.”  
  
Darcy laughs, and draws back without fully letting Jane go, her hands resting on Jane’s arm and shoulder. “I hear you’re using science to try and rip the sky open. That’s almost as rad as being a master of political science.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” Jane says sincerely, and Darcy looks at her through heavy-lidded eyes and smiles slowly.

“Me too,” is all she says.

*

Darcy loves New York, or so she keeps saying. She makes Jane take her to Times Square, to the Sephora inside Times Square, to Central Park, and spends an endless amount of time spotting photo opportunities. Jane reminds herself that it’s a weekend and she really doesn’t need to go back to the lab today, and spends a lot of time sneaking lingering looks at Darcy looking at New York.

Even if she’s quickly reminded of all the reasons that Darcy also annoys her to death when she insists that they snap a picture in front of Mamma Mia, a strip club, the Dakota, a hot dog stand, a gigantic billboard of Nicki Minaj, and the fountain at the heart of the park. “Strike a pose,” she tells Jane every time, holding the phone up with one arm.  
  
All the pictures look roughly the same: Darcy beaming at the camera with red lips, her arm hooked around Jane’s neck. Jane smiling faintly, almost puzzled, leaning into Darcy’s touch.

“I’m liveblogging all the parts of this trip that haven’t been declared top-secret by the government,” Darcy explains after snapping her twentieth myspace-angled shot, arm sliding away from Jane’s shoulders so she can tap something into her phone. “My twitter peeps are going to love this.”

“But you’re just taking pictures of us,” Jane points out. You couldn’t even see the fountain in the last one.  
  
Darcy shrugs. “Yeah, but my followers dig Jane tweets. I got almost a hundred new people after my last post about how much you failed to take advantage of Manhattan.”  
  
Jane blinks. “You write about me? On twitter?”

“Duh,” Darcy says. “Me: bored grad student with a twitter app. You: mad scientist obsessed with aliens. Also you’re an important person in my life,” she adds casually, “and kind of like five clichés rolled into one five-foot-three-inch package, so, you know. Obviously I talk to the internet about you.”  

“I’m surprised that SHIELD hasn’t black-bagged you yet,” Jane says, only half-joking.

“Don’t worry, I change all the names and dates. My ex who I wrote about all the time tried to sue me, so it was kind of a requirement.”  
  
“Except my name,” Jane says pointedly. “You kept that.”  
  
Darcy nods. “Yeah, well. I didn’t think you’d sue?”

Jane rolls her eyes, and Darcy perks up, suddenly.

“Oh! Oh, I want a picture in front of the Egyptian pillar thing! Take my picture in front of the Egyptian pillar thing.” She shoves her phone into Jane’s hands and runs towards a monument.

“Quit making me feel like I’m your babysitter!” Jane yells after her.

“You love me!” Darcy yells back, and just as Jane’s heart is about to stop, she adds: “And I love New York!”

*

Jane remembers, later on, to check Darcy’s twitter account. It’s mainly a series of random observations about life, food, and HBO shows, but googling her username + Jane results in a surprising number of tweets.

 **Darcy Lewis** @cutestofthescoobies  
Dr. Jane “why do I need to see Manhattan when it’s already well documented in tv and film?” [last name redacted] [~~#~~ DON](https://twitter.com/search?q=%23DON)’TDREAMIT [~~#~~ BEIT](https://twitter.com/search?q=%23BEIT)

 **Darcy Lewis** @cutestofthescoobies  
the woman has 3 DEGREES and no idea why she should want to see the inside of the metropolitan museum of art [~~#~~ jane](https://twitter.com/search?q=%23jane) [ ~~#~~ delivermefromscientists](https://twitter.com/search?q=%23delivermefromscientists)  
  
 **Darcy Lewis** @cutestofthescoobies  
Jane moves to NYC, land of moviestars, rockstars, tourist traps 1 month ago. has not seen Times Square yet. [~~#~~ reallifemadscientist](https://twitter.com/search?q=%23reallifemadscientist)

 **Darcy Lewis** @cutestofthescoobies  
don’t get too excited. she has a golden god RT @babiest OMG!! you guys are TOO CUTE. darcy+mad scientist=OTP

 **Darcy Lewis** @cutestofthescoobies  
only then i guess we could still get married over skype or something [~~#~~ jane](https://twitter.com/search?q=%23jane) [ ~~#~~ flubber](https://twitter.com/search?q=%23flubber) (how weird is it that weebo is now obsolete? ilu 90s!)

 **Darcy Lewis** @cutestofthescoobies  
’what day it is today, jane?’ ‘thursday!’ ‘anything else?’ ‘trash day?’ ‘anything else?’ IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE OUR WEDDING DAY, JANE

 **Darcy Lewis** @cutestofthescoobies  
I feel like the gf in Flubber #jane

 **Darcy Lewis** @cutestofthescoobies  
MY MAD SCIENTIST FORGOT ABOUT MY GRADUATION #absentmindedprofessors #inreallife #jane

 **Darcy Lewis** @cutestofthescoobies  
having a long distance mad scientist friend: like having a real life geopet [~~#~~ jane](https://twitter.com/search?q=%23jane) [ ~~#~~ cheezitsarenotfood](https://twitter.com/search?q=%23cheezitsarenotfood) [ ~~#~~ haveyouhadwatertoday](https://twitter.com/search?q=%23haveyouhadwatertoday)?  
  
 **Darcy Lewis** @cutestofthescoobies  
50 pages of reading to go, but the mad scientist is fed  & watered. a grad student’s work is never done [~~#~~ jane](https://twitter.com/search?q=%23jane) [ ~~#~~ gradstudentlyfe](https://twitter.com/search?q=%23gradstudentlyfe)

 **Darcy Lewis** @cutestofthescoobies  
love makes you do the wacky RT [~~@~~ jackjilldreams](https://twitter.com/jackjilldreams) you know you're going wayyy overboard with the [~~#~~ jane](https://twitter.com/search?q=%23jane) thing, right? don't get crazy dude

*  
  
They go to a (real-New-York-dive!) bar that night, tipsily argue about visiting a strip club, argue about trying to sneak into the last half of Orphans and stalk Shia LeBeouf after, and finally come back to Jane’s apartment and watch Star Wars.  
  
“This is just like New Mexico,” Darcy half-complains, collapsing on the couch. “Minus the tubs of ice cream. Hey, do you want ice cream?”  
  
“Yes,” Jane decides, pulling a blanket onto her lap from the floor while Darcy turns on Luke Skywalker & co and brings back a carton of sorbet from the freezer.

She lasts about as long as the Mos Eisley Cantina before drifting off.  
  
She wakes up an unclear amount of time later with her head in Darcy’s lap, Darcy’s fingers in her hair. She keeps her eyes closed.    
  
“You awake?” Darcy asks her.  
  
Jane shakes her head.  
  
“Faker,” Darcy murmurs, and Jane smiles.

“Hey,” Darcy says, and something about the tone of her voice makes Jane open her eyes. Darcy’s face is closer than usual, and she looks serious. “So, I’ve been kind of wondering something all day.”  
  
Jane sits up, getting a little space between them, and a line appears between Darcy’s eyebrows. “What’s up?”

“...Okay. Um, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m kind of really into you,” Darcy says carefully, and Jane’s heart starts beating impossibly fast. “And I’ve kind of been getting the vibe that it’s mutual? I basically just wanna clear the air. Like, we can keep doing the unresolved sexual tension thing if you want, but otherwise—“  
  
“—Otherwise,” Jane interrupts her, a huge smile taking over her face without her consent. “Definitely otherwise.”

Darcy grins back, and leans closer, and suddenly all Jane can see is her rosy mouth. “Well thank fuck,” she says, and that’s about when Jane thinks _screw it_ , and pulls Darcy the rest of the way in.  
  
Darcy is a surprisingly sweet kisser. She tastes like beer and lemon sorbet, and her hands are tight around Jane’s neck, all her soft curves pressed close, and Jane would hate that they have to break away to breathe, except that bares the arch of Darcy’s neck, and that’s a very good thing.

Jane is kissing that white curve, Darcy’s hands stroking down Jane’s back, when her elbow accidentally hits the volume on the remote control.  
  
 _Afraid I was going to leave without giving you a goodbye kiss_? Han Solo sneers, shockingly loud.  
  
 _I’d just as soon kiss a Wookie_ , Leia snaps back, and both of them burst out laughing.  
  
“‘I can arrange that,’” Darcy says with Han while Jane fumbles with the remote, grinning broadly. “‘You could use a good kiss.’”

Jane rolls her eyes and kisses Darcy back into quiet.

*  
  
“Tell me one thing,” Darcy asks later, breathless and naked in Jane’s bed.  
  
“What?” Jane asks, softly.  
  
 Darcy smiles, then says: “Like, theoretically. If you had to rate us—how do I measure up to the god of thunder?”  
  
“Oh my _god_ ,” Jane says, burying her face in Darcy’s neck. “I cannot believe you just asked me that.”

“Twitter want to know,” Darcy says unrepentantly, and Jane laughs into her skin.  
  
*  
  
Darcy got in on a Friday afternoon, which means they theoretically have the rest of the weekend to play tourist.  
  
They order in pizza three times and Thai food once, and don’t leave Jane’s apartment at all.

*

Jane goes back to work on Monday with a grin on her face that she really can’t help. Her first assistant raises an eyebrow, but lets it go.  
  
She has a really good day at work—and when she gets home, Darcy’s waiting.

They spend about two week in a glorious holding pattern: morning sex, then work (for Jane), sightseeing (for Darcy), followed by dinner and reunion sex.

Jane checks Darcy’s twitter once, with a rush of sentimentality, and finds an Instagram picture of her and Darcy’s bare feet tangled together, poking out from underneath a blanket. It’s captioned: “visit to New York going well.”   
  
*  
  
After two weeks, Darcy tells Jane that she has to fly back to UM and get her stuff out of her parent’s garage, because she found a job in the city.

Jane’s pleased—of course she is, Darcy’s not going to be her long-distance anything!—but still faintly disappointed that Darcy has to leave for another two weeks before coming back, and even more disappointed that Darcy won’t just move in with her.

“Jane, I love spending time with you, but you live in a government-assigned postage-stamp,” Darcy tells her unsympathetically. “There’s barely room for me and my duffel bag in your apartment as is—there would definitely not be room for me and all my crap.”

“But I work long hours, and having you already in my apartment is, like, the height of convenience!” Jane argues, and Darcy laughs at her.

“Okay, now I’m definitely moving out, just so that you’re forced to see the outdoors every once in a while.”

Darcy leaves, and Jane pretends there isn’t a tiny part of her that’s relieved, because it means she can stay at the lab until obscene hours of the night again, which she needs to, because she’s making real progress, and she feels like she can barely breathe, trying to keep pace.

And then Darcy’s back, and Jane’s helping her move into a sublet with three tattooed art students who go to NYU. Darcy seems totally enchanted with it, so Jane shrugs and doesn’t ask too many questions.

“Okay, so, first order of business,” Darcy says, when they’re sitting in her new room with two enormous suitcases worth of stuff emptied out onto the floor, “We need to find a haunt, a la Friends or How I Met Your Mother, and you need to do your bit and show up to it at least once a week, or else it won’t be a haunt. Should it be a bar, or a coffee shop? Shit, what am I saying? I’m gonna find us a place that does both.”  
  
“Uh huh,” Jane says. “Do I get to know where you’re going to be working, yet?” She will admit to having had a small panic attack that Darcy actually _had_ told her and she’d just forgotten, but a few careful questions had made it clear that all Darcy had really said about her job was: personal assistant.

“How about I tell you at our haunt?” Darcy suggests brightly, and holds up a selection of coffee shop/bars shining on her phone screen. Jane makes a face once she realizes that Darcy intends to test out every one.  
  
“How about you tell me now?”  
  
“Personal assistant for a government official,” Darcy says, pulling her shoes on, “I start tomorrow. And that’s all you’re getting, for now. Come on, the first place is only like, six blocks from here.”

As it turns out, Jane doesn’t need to wait until Darcy’s found them a haunt, because she finds out the next day at work when she calls Carter’s office about a requisition form that never went through.

“Agent Carter’s office,” Darcy chirps on the other end of the phone.

“…Hi,” Jane says after a pause.  
  
“Aw, crap,” Darcy says, sounding genuinely disappointed. “I was totally going to show up to the lab later and surprise you.”

“I’m pretty surprised,” Jane says faintly.

“Hey,” Darcy says, voice turning serious, “You know I didn’t really want to step back from the weird shit, either. This is—you know, a way to take a step forward, while still getting to use my actual skillset! Plus, room for growth, and being near my mad scientist girlfriend, and, you know. It’s a good.”  
  
“Yeah,” Jane agrees, smiling at nothing. “It’s a good.”

*  
  
Their haunt turns out to be pretty much perfect. It’s close enough to Times Square to be convenient for them both to traipse to after work (and convenient for Jane to visit before guiltily slinking back to work), it does coffee and alcohol, it’s as cheap as you can go in Manhattan (not very), and on Thursday nights a band made up of four disillusioned ex-cocaine addicts from Arizona plays. Darcy adores it.  
  
For her part, Jane keeps waiting for Darcy to complain about how much time Jane spends at work, for Darcy to complain that Jane values her work more than her, for Darcy to lay down an ultimatum, but it doesn’t happen. Darcy texts her while Jane spends late nights in the lab, same as always.  
  
Once, Jane wakes up from an impromptu nap in front of her computer to find a hot to-go cup of coffee steaming at her shoulder. She winces when she looks at the time and remembers she was supposed to meet Darcy for a coffee break an hour ago—but when she picks up the coffee, there’s a note written on the side, in Darcy’s looping handwriting.  
  
 _It’s not a date—it’s a caffeinated beverage! Quit stressing, Foster. xo_  
  
 _I seriously don’t deserve you_ , Jane texts to Darcy, still too tired to be less emotional.  
  
 _< 3_ is all Darcy texts back.  
  
*

Jane does it. She _does_ it.

She doesn’t mean to open the door right there, in her lab, in the middle of SHIELD’s top-secret underground location, but she does, and it stays steady, and there are people running around like crazy behind her, calling for Director Fury and Agent Hill and Romanoff if they can get Romanoff, and Jane can feel herself actually shaking, because she’s _done it_.

There’s a portal to another part of space hanging over the mass spectrometer, and Jane is face-to-face with an imposing man in gold armor, who blinks at her with something like shock. She tries not to stare at the shining city she can just catch sight of over his shoulder.

“Jane Foster,” the man— _alien_!—says solemnly.

She should probably wait until the superheroes get here, or the director, or the people trained in cultural sensitivity—but he knows her name, and it seems rude not to reply.

“Yes,” she says, although it doesn’t really seem like he’s asking a question. “Um. Is this Asgard?”  
  
The man nods gravely.  
  
“ _Wow_ ,” she says. 

That’s about when Director Fury and the experts get there, and she is unceremoniously pushed to the back of the room. There’s a crowd gathering outside the lab, peering in the glass windows with varying levels of excitement and fear. More than a few agents show up armed with Chitauri weapons, which she guesses isn’t overkill when the last Asgardian alien to visit Earth was Loki.

Jane catches sight of Darcy through the glass, and Darcy shoots her two thumbs up and mouths DUDE YOU ROCK, and Jane beams back because yeah, she really does.

Only then Jane hears a familiar voice coming from the portal, calling her name.

Thor steps through, and he’s exactly the same as she remembered: larger than life, gold and bright and— _here_.  
  
“Jane!” he says, warm and thrilled, and without really thinking about it at all she rushes

towards him, and he sweeps her up into his arms, and they’re both laughing and she might also be crying a little with sheer triumph, and he actually _swings her around in a circle,_ but Jane figures the entire world can cut her some slack right now, because she’s _done it_.

“I have missed you,” he says, hands still tight on her shoulders.  
  
“I missed you too,” she laughs, brushing the tears away from her eyes.  
  
She stays pressed against Thor’s side while he greets the Director and Agent Romanoff, and her heart is so full that it takes her a couple minutes to realize that Darcy isn’t watching from the window anymore.  
  
With a sickening lurch, she remembers New Mexico, how she got so single-minded about Thor that she forgot all about Darcy, how she moped for weeks after, how Darcy never really believed it was about the work and not about the man. She remembers breaking up with Donald, when he wouldn’t believe that her long hours and inattention weren’t about a guy on the side, when Jason and Emily and Todd all broke up with her because she always put work first. Every relationship, every time, the same problem, always nothing she can fix--and none of them had half the reason Darcy has to think Jane doesn’t care.  
  
“Oh my god,” she says aloud, and Thor stops, turning to her immediately. “You know what,” she says, a little dazed, “I think I need to go. But I am—I am really glad you’re back, and we should—we should talk later, okay?”  
  
Thor looks puzzled, but accepts, giving her another bone-crushing hug before she leaves, and she takes a second to really hope that Thor is good with staying friends, because he gives really awesome hugs—

and then she’s pushing her way out of the room, away from the crowd of people who all want to talk to her or congratulate her or debrief her, through the corridors towards Agent Carter’s office, because she really doesn’t want this to be the moment Darcy gives up on her, she doesn’t think she could handle it if it was.  
  
She finds Darcy in the hallway, walking away.  
  
“Hey!” Jane bursts out, insistent and out of breath. “I—stop. Stop right there.”

Darcy turns around, wide-eyed, but Jane doesn’t let her speak, because she _has_ to hear Jane out first.  
  
“I’m a bad girlfriend,” Jane says all in a rush. “I work too much, and I care about it too much, and I’m always going to do that, and it’s always a problem in all of my relationships, but I can’t really change that and I, I don’t really want to.”  
  
“I know that,” Darcy says, starting to look irritated, now, but Jane isn’t done yet.

“Well, you need to know that, but you also need to know that—I don’t want a big thing with Thor, I don’t want a big epic love story, a big Buffy and Angel thing, I just, I’m good with—with you, and this, and you should—you should know that you’re important to me,” Jane finishes almost angrily.

“Are you sure that you don’t want a big epic thing?” Darcy asks her, eyebrows raised. “Because you seem pretty determined that we have a big public moment right now.”  
  
“You walked away!” Jane protests, heart still beating wildly, but vaguely glad that Darcy’s smiling, even if she isn’t sure why.  
  
“Because I’m _at work_ ,” Darcy stresses, rolling her eyes but stepping closer. “Calm down, you crazy woman.”  
  
And then her arms are around Jane, and Jane rests her head on Darcy’s shoulder and slowly exhales. “Um. Can I. Can I chalk this up to a really huge adrenaline rush?”  
  
“If you want,” Darcy says calmly. “I love you too, by the way.”  
  
And that’s it, obviously, of course. She feels like an idiot for not figuring it out sooner. “I love you,” Jane says earnestly, lifting her head up and looking Darcy in the eye.

Darcy laughs and says “I know.”

-the end-

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are love, and concrit is always appreciated. If you have a tumblr, I’m over there as wildehack, and always happy to talk about the Avengers ladies. (And the Avengers dudes, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Sherlock Holmes, and...basically whatever else catches my eye. My attention span is small.)


End file.
